Archive for February, 2011

It’s been a long week at Giant Sparrow. Many of us have been in and out of the office with various ailments, and it’s got us feeling less than vivacious. We had to meet a pretty substantial deadline that culminated in a playtest this Wednesday, and the timing worked out such that we had to push our usual team lunch off to a later day. Today, Friday, became the day for this week’s team lunch, and we took a short drive through the rain to try the food at Simpang Asia.

Here’s a little background on how team lunch usually works: Ian picks a place to eat via a mysterious method known only to him (Google Maps), everyone picks a car to ride in (we’re now numerous enough to require 2 cars), and we all drive to the restaurant. If you ride in Nathan’s car, he blasts metal and navigates by GPS. When you roll with me, there’s less Metal, Ian navigates, and the eatery is a mystery until it’s time to park. The mystery element is very important, because idle speculation kicks off the conversation for the drive.

This time around, Ian dropped a hint and claimed we were going to a place with delicious frog legs. This started all kinds of speculation about what kind of cuisine we’d be eating (French? A country formerly occupied by the French? South East Asian?), and he gave a little more ground: we’d be eating Indonesian fare, not French. A few minutes later, we arrived at the Simpang Asia.

Nathan was excited to be eating here. He lives close by and vouched strongly variety and quality of the food. For my part, I don’t think I’ve ever been to an Indonesian restaurant before, but I was looking forward to it.

We were a bit short handed today (those various ailments doing their thing), which was a shame because of the wide sampling of things available to try at Simpang Asia. But between the six of us, we managed to get a plethora of things many of us had never had before. From memory (and looking at their website), here’s what we ate: Lumpia Semarang, Spider (Bakwan), Nasi Rames, Sop Buntut, a whole fried tilapia, two different dishes wrapped in banana leaves (I can’t find on theme on the website), Durian juice, Honeydew juice, Kopi Tubruk, Pisang Bakar, and Roti Bakar. But no frogs legs. They had run out of them, but I think we made up for it. Josh, Cory, and Chris all got Nasi Rames, and the line on the menu about how it was a “great combination for the first timer” seems to have borne out. Everyone who tried the desserts (Pisang/Roti Bakar) was suprised by how the cheese/chocolate topping of each played out.

We left in a better mood, and I’m inclined to think this trip to Simpang Asia wasn’t a half-bad way to end a long week. Even if durian was involved.

When we started making The Unfinished Swan we thought we’d need four, maybe five people. As we figured out the game that number has grown a bit. One of our goals as a company is to keep the team as small as possible so we’ve been pretty conservative about our hiring. Today we’re at eight people and looking to add a few more. Specifically, we’re looking for a Game Designer, a Senior Programmer, and a 3D Artist. You can find all the details on our jobs page.

There’s a chance this might be the last time we ever hire anyone, for anything. Which means if you have any interest in joining our team now would be a really good time to share that interest.

We’ll be in San Francisco for GDC next week — shoot us an email if you’d like to meet up!

As you may have noticed, our blog has been pretty quiet for a long while, which is something we aim to change in 2011. While we haven’t been given the all-clear by our partners to talk about what Giant Sparrow has been working on, we can at least share more of our quotidian doings.

One of the things we do every week is go out to lunch as a team on Wednesday, and we’ve been eating our way through what Santa Monica and its environs. A few weeks ago, we had a chance to enjoy a meal at A Votre Sante (“To your health!”) up in Brentwood, which is a bit further away from our stomping grounds than we usually travel. I would make crack about their Organic Porridge (it’s oatmeal. Not that there’s anything wrong with oatmeal), but according to Nathan and Joshua it was pretty tasty.

We’ve also grown a fair amount– you may notice some new faces in the above picture. We’ll introduce you to these new folks over the coming weeks.

On a related note as we try to liven up this blog, what sort of things would you like to see here?